[JDEV] [Off Topic] Jabber Client for the Command Line

[Jonathan Conrad]

I haven't yet tried to play with the Jarl client, but I imagine that it
requires X Windows, and the Gabber client for Gnome probably requires
Windows also, and the Windows clients for Microsoft's point and click thingy
probably won't do anything useful in command.com, and the client for the
Macintosh probably requires the user to occaisionally handle one of those
dirty little rodents, and I don't even know what the Newton MessagePad is,
but it sounds like something that doesn't even have a keyboard.  My point is
that it is silly that I should have to stop typing and dig my mouse out from
beneath the pile of books and papers on my desk to point at something and
click on it so that I can type something to it.  I still yet to get X
Windows working with my ATI Rage Fury 32Mb AGP video card with anything
better than 640x480x4 bit, and will only use it for a fish tank when I do
get it to work.  (Could specifying the exact frequencies for my monitor be
giving me problems?  Should I allow a slightly higher or lower refresh rate?
Is the problem with the new hardware that doesn't entirely implement the
good old standard SVGA because the new "features" are designed for Microsoft
Windows 9x?)  Anyway, my intention is to implement a telnet client
"transport" that has a nice ANSI graphical interface for use from the bash
prompt (telnet localhost $JABBERPORT) and maybe a mechanism like an IRC
server for users of differing clients to all use a common channel to have a
group discussion.  The channel would just be a set of identities from all of
the participating users' servers which are allocated as needed from a set of
ICQ numbers and AOL "screen names" and similar Yahoo and MSN devices.  Maybe
I can just use the IRC transport with BitchX or something, but the telnet
transport seems like a good idea that shouldn't be too complicated to
implement.  I look forward to your suggestions and comments, but I may not
check my email again until Sunday evening.  In the meantime, this is
Jonathan Conrad, and I am rebooting to RedHat...

By the way, are there any other pieces of Open Source software that may
allow me to use ICQ in Linux, especially without using X?